Flower in the Darkness
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPSS slash. Severus is visited by three ghosts who teach him lessons about love, Christmas, and his relationship with Harry. COMPLETE.


**Title: **Flower in the Darkness

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Snape, past one-sided Snape/Lily, one-sided Harry/Ginny

**Rating: **PG-13

**Warnings: **Angst, mentions of canonical character deaths, mentions of violence

**Wordcount:** 7600

**Summary: **Severus is visited by three ghosts who teach him something about Christmas, love, and his relationship with Harry.

**Author's Notes: **This is another of my Advent fics for alexis_sd, who asked for Snape _being visited Christmas Carol style by the three ghost of Christmas and they remind him of his love and what he is about to lose._ The natures of the various ghosts are strongly indebted to the original _A Christmas Carol _by Dickens.

**Flower in the Darkness**

**The Night Before**

The slam of the door made Severus's head ache more than the tension of the night so far had done.

After a moment spent in rubbing his temples, he turned and picked up the bottle of Headache Draught that he had prepared earlier in the day after he saw Harry rubbing his old scar. If he had known the row the night would become, he would not have bothered, but now the potion could benefit him.

As he drank, and the pain peaked once and then began to ease, Severus contemplated that row, their fifth this week. Yes, he had known it was Christmas Eve, as he had patiently explained to Harry. And yes, he knew that he had agreed to spend several days at the Weasleys' ratty old house for Christmas this year.

But when the time came, he found himself unable to face the noise of the children. And he had some owl orders for potions that he didn't have to fulfill, since his living lay elsewhere, in the selling and preparation of ingredients, but he was intrigued by the challenge and wanted to. He couldn't give up one of his brewing evenings.

Harry had accused him, in a voice that made Severus's headache worse, of breaking his promises and never caring about anything but his precious potions. And when Severus had told him to be quiet, he had slammed out of the house, even before Severus could explain that he wanted Harry to be quiet because his head hurt, not because he wanted him to shut up so badly.

Severus said, and dropped his hands, which had continued to massage in circles. Yes, perhaps he had worded it badly, but if Harry wanted to spend time with his Weasleys, who were just as important to him as Severus's potions—more so than Severus ever had been—let him. Severus had had enough of presents and screaming children already this year, when he had ventured into Diagon Alley to buy Harry's Christmas gift.

He took a look at the neatly wrapped package sitting in plain sight on the mantle. Perhaps it would never be given, now.

But he would not concern himself with that. He stepped into the lab, and shut the door behind him. After a moment's thought, he added the powerful Locking Charms that he had never taught Harry, so that there would be no disturbance even if he returned.

Perhaps Harry would say that was another instance of Severus's insufferable pride. Severus did not care. He was quite ready to give up possible reconciliation with his lover for a few hours of peace in which to brew.

He turned around—

And nearly flung a curse that would have smashed more of his cauldrons and beakers than he could afford to comfortably replace.

Standing in front of him was a transparent image of a woman, her eyes huge and grave. She wore a hooded cloak that Severus had never seen her wear in life, and held a single white flower, even more filmy and fragile than her name, in one hand.

"Hello, Severus," Lily Evans said softly.

**Christmas Past**

Severus shook his head. His chest felt numb, and the feeling nearly made its way to his hands, which would have forced him to drop the wand. But he retained the grip, and the obvious answer came to him with a beat that joined his heart inside his chest. Harry had been studying Glamour Charms lately as part of his Auror training.

"Very clever, Harry," he said, harshly, aloud, glancing around and trying to make it seem as if he had never jumped. Of course, if Harry was hiding close enough to cast the charm, then he would have seen the start no matter how Severus tried to mask it. "I was surprised, I admit it. You can come out now."

There was silence. Severus turned his furious gaze back on the translucent image before him. He had to admit it was remarkably like Lily Evans, except drained of color. Would Harry be able to manage a Glamour Charm that resembled his mother as Severus had known her so closely, when he had only the old, colored photographs to refine on?

Ah, but Harry had seen Lily in Severus's memories, too. Severus sometimes forgot that—wanted to forget that, the way he wanted to forget the whole war. A somewhat thwarted effort, since he had taken Harry for a lover.

He held his wand steady, and shook his head when Lily stretched out an appealing hand. "I don't have to stand there and take this," he said, and cast the spell that would banish any glamour he knew of, especially here in the lab where his own magic and not Harry's infused the walls. Any intruding spell would find it harder to hold on here than anywhere else in the house.

But the image of Lily never wavered, only continued gazing earnestly at him, and now that Severus thought about it, he realized that the temperature in the immediate room had dropped. He narrowed his eyes. That was the sort of effect that often came along with ghosts, and he doubted Harry would have thought ahead enough to imitate it, if he was merely playing a joke.

However, what reason would Lily's spirit have to wander? She had accomplished all she had ever wanted when she died protecting her son, and surely she was happy with her _husband _in death.

Acid filled Severus's throat at the thought, and he licked his lips. "Be gone," he whispered, and began to move his wand again, this time casting the sort of Banishing Charm that he would need to use for a true ghost. This thing might not be real, but the magic was strong enough to take care of other kinds of threats.

"Severus," Lily repeated, her eyes so bright and sad that Severus paused in spite of himself to listen to her. "I know that you're having trouble in your relationship with Harry. I don't want to see that happen. Please. Will you listen to me? I want to see you both happy. You're not going to be if you continue the way you are now."

Severus heard his wand make an odd noise as he pressed his fingers into the wood. He eased his grip at once, shaking his head. The last thing he wanted to do was break his wand over a worthless brat.

"Go away, Lily," he said. For now, he would accept the reality of the vision. "The living must make their own mistakes. The dead can't interfere."

"The dead can help, too," Lily said. "If the living let them." The hand that didn't hold the lily flower was still held out to him, the fingers shading at the end into something like the rosy tint of living flesh. "Will you come with me and see a vision that might help you to understand Harry better?"

Severus snorted bitterly. Pretending that this was Lily hadn't made things better. He ought to have known it wouldn't. She was only concerned for her son, as she had always been. "You think that I should understand him? What about him understanding _me_?"

"He does," Lily said, and her voice descended to a little hum on the edge of Severus's hearing. "He understands that he irritates you, but when he asks you that, you deny it. So then he thinks that you're lying and gets more anxious and tries to change things about himself, but he doesn't know what he should change. And he doesn't know why you lie. I thought, perhaps, if you understood him better, then you would be a little less impatient with him."

Severus sneered at her. "Even assuming that I accepted what Gryffindors believe about our _relationship, _I know that communication goes both ways, Lily. Why should I be the one that has to change for him?"

"Because," Lily said gently, "he already had his chance to understand you better, and took it. I've already been to him. What's defeating him now is not misunderstanding, but this denial you have that any promises made to him matter."

Severus stared hard at her. "Why did he never mention this?" Despite what he had already thought about Harry this evening, he felt a poisonous little spark of spite stir to life inside him, that Harry could have seen this kind of ghost vision of his mother, and perhaps others, and thought never to mention it to Severus. Of course, he would probably share his confidences with his best friends, who even after five years still had more of him than Severus would ever possess…

"It was in a dream," Lily said. "He doesn't know that it was real." She lowered her voice. "But you, Severus, guard your dreams too well. You can think of this that way, though, if you want. Or you can refuse the chance." She hesitated. "We can't compel you."

"Who is _we_?" Severus looked around the room, wondering if other ghosts would materialize out of the walls. But surely there would be none who would mean as much to him as Lily would.

"The other spirits who will grant you visions tonight," Lily said simply, and extended her hand. "Shall we go?"

Severus stilled his tongue. He didn't know exactly what this was, but he wanted to find out. His curiosity, the same that had always eaten him up when he read about some potion he had never heard of or whose recipe was thought to be long-lost, made him reach out and lay his hand on that filmy palm.

The fingers clasped his, surprisingly strong and warm, but fleeting, a memory, in the moments before they disappeared.

* * *

They appeared in a room so garishly decorated that for a moment Severus felt a wince of sympathy at arguing Harry out of putting up any Christmas decorations.

There was a tree in one corner draped with what looked like meters of lights and tinsel. It sat on an overflowing heap of presents. Counting them was the fattest child that Severus had ever seen, and for a second, Severus thought that it was actually a duck that had hatched from one of the presents, like an egg.

But then it turned around and yelled, "_MUM!_" and he realized that he recognized the face. Harry's cousin, whom Severus had sometimes seen in his memories.

"What is it, Dudders?" Footsteps shuddered down a hidden corridor, and Tuney hurried into the room. Severus curled his lip. Harry had given him back his memories when he had found Severus clinging to life by a bezoar in his mouth on the floor of the Shrieking Shack, but the ones of Tuney were those that Severus wished he had told him to keep.

"I only have _eighty presents!_ Not the eighty-one you promised me!" The boy stretched out his arms and wailed like an earthquake.

"No, look, Dudders," Tuney said soothingly, crouching down and picking up a tiny present that dangled from the end of a branch. "You missed this one, see? And I bet you know what it is…" She shook it, and coins jingled.

"Gimme!" The boy began hopping up and down, reaching for it, and Tuney handed it to him, sniffling a little, with a frankly disgusting simper on her face. Severus turned away in disgust, and followed Lily's pointing hand to a small door in the turn of the room that Tuney had hurried out of.

"Where is Harry?" Severus asked, looking around. Pictures of Tuney and family covered the walls. None of Harry. He had known that, already. He _had _known that. Harry had told him as much, that he wasn't welcome with his Muggle relatives, and well, Severus had known Tuney. There was no reason for this revelation to make his breath catch a little in his throat, and then come short.

"Here." Lily drew him on, and the wall that was in front of them, which Severus had time to see was the wall under the stairs, with a tiny door in the middle of it, melted away and he saw Harry.

A tiny child, with green eyes so big that Severus examined his ribs without bothering to be told, sat on a cot in the cupboard, rocking back and forth. A shout of joy came from the whale outside, and Harry shut his eyes and ducked his head into his knees.

"What is going on?" Severus knew that his words couldn't have reached this child-memory of his lover anyway, but he also couldn't get enough air into his lungs to make the words any louder than a whisper.

"They always left him in here when they had Christmas." Lily stared yearningly at Harry, and stroked his hair with one hand. He didn't look up. He couldn't feel her, Severus told himself. No matter what this was, it was only something that had happened once, not the present, not the real. "They didn't want to buy any gifts for him. They didn't want to be reminded that something from the outside had intruded on their perfect little family." Her voice held a depth of bitterness that Severus had never heard from her when she was alive and speaking of her sister. "Normal people don't have sisters and brothers-in-law who get killed by evil wizards, and normal people don't have to raise their freakish nephews."

Severus stared at Harry, and didn't know what to say.

"Now can you understand, Severus?" Lily turned to look at him. She had laid the lily she had come with down on Harry's little bed, as though a flower he could neither see nor touch nor smell might comfort him. "Do you wonder now that Harry makes a big deal, as you think he does, out of Christmas and birthdays? He never had anyone in his life who made a big deal of those things for him, until he went to Hogwarts. The Dursleys gave him presents sometimes, but they were mocking ones. Toothpicks. Old shoes." She wiped tears from her eyes, and closed them. "I wish I had been here. Oh, I _wish _I had been here."

Severus closed his eyes and nodded. He might not have the breath to confirm what Lily wanted him to confirm, but that also meant he could not contradict her, the way she seemed to be afraid that he would.

"Good," Lily said, and Severus felt a faint, warm tingle on the sides of his face. He opened his eyes, and Lily was holding either side of his hand. She watched him with that smile, as pallid as the flower. "I'll let you go on to the next vision now. I think you need it, to help you recover from this one."

Severus managed to reply at that. "You don't think that _Harry's _the one who needs help recovering?"

"You can give him that," Lily whispered to him. "If you want, now that you know some of the reasons behind his actions." She smiled at him. "I want you to be happy, too, Severus. And this is the best way I know of to make you like that. Otherwise…"

Severus reached up to touch her hand. He believed, now. Perhaps he should not, but he believed. "What do you mean?"

Lily shut her eyes and kissed him. It was a fragile, melting warmth that melted the memory around them, too, and Severus found himself back in his lab, a white petal drifting through the air in front of him that faded even as he reached out to clasp it.

He might have stood there without moving for hours, but a loud firework burst behind him, and a voice shouted, "Happy Christmas, greasy bat! What have you been doing to our Harriekins, then?"

**Christmas Present**

Severus spun around so fast that his heels briefly left the lab floor, and aimed his wand at the new intruder, even though he had no doubt that it was the bearer of the second vision that Lily had promised him.

"_You_," he snarled at the brightly-dressed figure—pink scarf, turquoise jumper, and bright green trousers—that hovered in the middle of his lab, purposely crouching transparently in the middle of his cauldron. "You're dead."

The ghost of Fred Weasley checked himself over, grinning, from one translucent hand to his ruby-red boots. "That I am," he said, and clapped as Severus continued to glare at him. "It's rather a requirement for the job, you know. I can see where you got that reputation for intelligence from, Professor Snape."

Severus refused to dignify that with an angry answer. This Weasley boy was not Lily, and could not understand the way he responded to ancient taunts. He folded his arms instead. "And where have you come to guide me? To another childhood memory of Harry's?" He didn't know what childhood memory the Weasley boy could have to compare to the one Lily had shown him, what he might have been present for, but then again, Lily had not been present for Harry's Christmases with those awful Muggles, either.

Weasley grinned and saluted him with a glass of champagne that he had got from nowhere. "To my family's Christmas party, Professor Snape. I'm afraid that you'll have to keep your promise to Harry after all."

Severus hardly had time to shake his head before he had a glass of champagne in his hand as well. He shook it off, and the champagne vanished with a sensation against his palm annoyingly like Lily's kiss. "Why are _you_ here?" he demanded. "I can see why Lily might care if Harry and I remain happy, but why _you_?"

Weasley's smile disappeared, although only until the walls faded in around them and Severus heard the noises of a party in another room. "You never did pay attention to people other than Ronniekins and Hermione and how much they cared for Harry, did you?" Weasley asked softly. "This time, you have to."

Severus huffed and crossed his arms. "I was inconvenienced by it in Minerva and Albus more than once." He turned his head, wondering if he could somehow escape, but although the walls had been shimmering a moment ago, they looked alarmingly solid now.

Weasley twitched his head, the grin back in full force. Severus found out why when something trickled down his cheeks. He reached up to discover another ghostly champagne glass on his head. Dashing it down full-force provided a little satisfaction—but then it disappeared in mid-air, giving him no shatter or spill.

"You never paid enough attention," Weasley repeated. "And you go with Harry so rarely to other places that you never hear how he talks about you to other people, either. Now you have to." He beckoned to Severus, and wandered off towards the noises.

Severus thought about staying where he was, but something that looked alarmingly like one of the Weasleys' Extendable Ears curled about his ankle and tugged him along. In the interests of maintaining some dignity, Severus followed.

They landed in the full swing of a party so loud that Severus winced and wished he could muffle this noises as Harry could do with their modified Muggle telly. If he had thought the Christmas tree in the Dursleys' drawing room large, it was nothing compared to here, although the presents had already been reduced to scraps of paper and ribbon and string that seemed exactly of the kind that Severus could use in the lab. Of course, when he stooped to pick it up, his hand went right through it.

Grimacing, Severus glanced around. The Weasley matriarch was on the couch, surrounded by so many grandchildren that Severus felt as if he was staring into the sun to look at all their red hair. Her husband stood off to one side, chatting to his two eldest sons, and the living twin sat with one arm around his wife and one arm around their infant son.

_Also named Fred, _Severus suddenly remembered. He glanced to the side, but Fred Weasley the Former was watching him with an open, daring grin.

"Forge always was the sentimental one," he said, and Severus decided that he wouldn't even attempt to understand the joke. "But come on. Harry's over here." Once again he towed Severus, and Severus ducked around a corner into a quiet part of the room he hadn't even suspected existed.

Harry stood there, staring out the window. He still wore the green jumper he had left the house in, the ridiculous one that Severus hated because of the raveling sleeves and had bought a gift to replace. He had a glass of something that also looked suspiciously alcoholic in one hand, but wasn't drinking it. Severus was doubly glad. Harry did childish things, sometimes, when he had drunk.

"Harry, are you okay?"

It was the Weasley girl. Severus stiffened, and then reminded himself how ridiculous that was. Not only could he do nothing at the moment, but he knew that Harry had broken up with the girl long before he started dating Severus. And he had reassured Severus in the way he had reacted to her since, as if they were friends but nothing more.

However, Severus was not nearly as sure of _her _desire to be nothing more. The way she leaned on the window now, and gazed yearningly at Harry over the edge of her glass of Firewhisky, made Severus reach for his wand.

"Pay attention," Fred Weasley said, flicking his fingers just behind Severus's head. Severus jumped as they impacted with his skull. "We wouldn't want you to have to do this over again."

Just as Severus was about to demand how _that _could happen, anyway, when the Weasleys' Christmas celebration was tonight and there was no way that it could be repeated, Harry answered the Weasley girl softly. "I'll _be _all right," he said, and sipped from his glass. Severus automatically reached out to take it from him, and retracted his arm when he saw how transparent it was. "Just had a row with Severus, that was all."

The girl nodded and made a humming sound under her breath. "I noticed he wasn't here tonight."

"She doesn't care about why," hissed Severus, as Harry turned towards her and seemed to brighten. "She just wants to get him to talk, and perhaps expose the problems between us. Does he not _see _that?"

Fred Weasley glanced mildly at him. "Not often enough."

It shut Severus up as nothing else could have done, and so he was clearly able to hear Harry's answer.

"I do love him, you know, Ginny," he said softly to the girl, who bowed her head and seemed to take refuge behind her hair. But if Harry could be oblivious to the way that she was drawing him out, it seemed that he was also oblivious to the signals meant to entice him. He was staring blindly off into the corner, at the warbling wireless. "But it's hard, sometimes, to realize that he doesn't want to share Christmas with me. I was always left out when I was a kid, and then it was my favorite holiday at Hogwarts, and now he won't come with me…"

There was an expression of abiding misery in his eyes that Severus had seen before, but would not have understood so well before tonight, and the revelations that Lily had given him. He scowled.

Fred poked him. "Do you _understand _now?"

Severus would have retorted, but the girl leaned forwards and whispered, "There are people who'll always welcome you here, Harry."

Severus bristled, but Harry smiled up at her and shook his head. "I know, Ginny. It just isn't the same. You're my family, and I love all of you, but Severus is so important to me. And it's like being left out all over again, sometimes." Then he took a deep breath. "But really, I should try and be grateful for what I have."

He patted the girl on the shoulder and worked his way past her to the Weasley mother and grandchildren, leaving the girl to droop behind him. No, he had never noticed the invitation that she was unsubtly extending.

Severus closed his eyes. He surged with the triumph of knowing his bond with Harry was safe, and the mortification of knowing that other people were hearing this about them.

"No one would ever have to hear about the problems between you, if you would do a better job of defending what you have."

Severus glared at Fred, who had got a glass of punch in his hand that was as transparent as he was, even though there was no way that should have been able to happen. "What else can I do? I know the truth about his childhood now, but I cannot come with him to the Weasley celebration. I am _not _that kind of man."

"Funny," said Fred in a chirpy voice, and conjured a Christmas cracker into his hand, pulling it with two fingers. It blew up with a noise that made Severus stagger back, but he could still hear the ghost's voice through that. "Because I wouldn't have pegged you as the kind of man who wanted to drive your lover away, either. Didn't that happen once before, and you swore it would never happen again?"

Severus staggered again, but for a different reason this time. "How did you…"

"We _talk_, you know." Fred drained his punch and gave Severus a cross between a glance of disgust and one of exasperation. "And you might come up with charms that would deafen the noise of the children in your ears and stick only to the adults in your company. Nobody's _asking _you to play with them."

Severus frowned and blinked. He had indeed used such charms, sometimes even when the chatter of denizens of Potions conferences was too much for him. When had he decided there was no possible way that he could use them at the Weasleys'?

_Never, because you never thought of it._

He should have, Severus could admit that to himself. He had simply been so determined to brew, and to make Harry stay at home with him for once, that he had shoved the idea away.

He glanced at Harry again. He was smiling now at something one of the innumerable little girls was doing, but he still cast a glance at the doorway into the kitchen, as though expecting Severus to walk through it any second.

"He's miserable without you," said Fred, appearing at his shoulder again. "Of course, maybe you like that. Since you care the most about spreading misery."

Severus actually tried to box the ghost's ears, which of course was remarkably ineffective. Fred danced away, laughing. "Hey, I only speak from what I see!"

Severus sighed and brought his hands to his temples. Yes, he felt badly about the row with Harry earlier. If he had known what Christmas had meant to Harry…

But why had it taken ghosts to show him that?

He could have known if he had looked. He _would _have known if he had looked. He had prided himself on his observational skills as a spy, but also on his ability to put together clues and make a new picture out of them, even clues that other people didn't realize they were dropping. And he had had hints from Harry in the past that his relatives weren't the best.

What had prevented him from realizing the importance of Christmas to Harry?

_Because it wasn't important to me, and it mattered more to me to keep my distance from the celebrations than it did to indulge his passion._

"Ah," said Fred next to him. "Now you're getting it."

Severus raised his head. The Burrow had faded, and they were standing in his lab instead. Fred sat in the middle of a vial, his body contracted to fit the liquid inside it, and wagged his finger at Severus as he looked up and around.

"The next one isn't going to be pleasant," Fred muttered. "We were supposed to come back here when you'd learned your lesson from me. I hope that you get to _come _back from the next one."

Severus frowned at him. "What do you mean? What are you—"

And then Fred vanished, the only thing left lying on the table where he had been a luminous, translucent flower, like the one that Lily had left on the young Harry's cot. Severus picked it up and trailed it through his fingers. This one was a carnation, the color bright red as a Weasley's hair.

A soft chuckle behind him made him pause before turning around.

**Christmas Future**

Severus did turn. He made himself do it slowly, indifferently, even though he had recognized that laughter and it made him want to lash out.

But if this was a ghost in the manner that Lily and Fred had been ghosts, he could not damage it anyway. However, knowing what he did about the fashion in which this particular _person _had died, he wondered it could have become a ghost in the same manner as the others.

A black, hooded figure stood in the middle of his lab, next to the cauldron that Fred had occupied when he first showed up. His hands clenched on either side of his hood, and he hesitated as if he would draw it back from his face. Severus stood there, his legs stiffly braced, waiting for that particular countenance.

Then the hands fell away, and the figure chuckled again. Severus could swear he saw whorls of frost spreading across the windows in the wake of that sound. "No, you don't need to sssee my face, do you, Ssseverusss?" he whispered. "You know it."

Severus nodded, saying nothing. He would not call this fragment of a rotting soul _my lord, _but he could not quite speak the other name, the one Harry used so fearlessly, aloud, either.

"What a tasssk," said the hissing figure. "What an honor. Come with me, and I shall show you the future." He beckoned with one wagging white finger, and turned to walk to the far side of the lab.

Severus closed his eyes briefly, wondering what would happen if he refused to follow. Well, perhaps he would lose Harry, the way that Lily had warned him. He swallowed back a mixture of bile and disgust and followed the figure through the far wall of the lab, which became snow and melted in front of them.

They stood on a plain of snow, so flat and uninhabited that Severus stared far more than he had at even Lily's ghost. He had expected the middle of London, or maybe Hogwarts, but here was _nothing_. A small shape did rise under the blanket of snow, but when Severus bent down and brushed it off, it turned out to be a tree stump.

"Come, Ssseverusss. We do not have all night."

Severus straightened himself, shuddering, and followed the ghost across the expanse of flat, blank snow. There was still no sign of inhabitation: no footsteps, no marks of Muggle vehicles, and not even the hoofprints that Severus would ordinarily expect, from centaurs and unicorns, in a place so wild. They would favor those plains where no human feet ever walked, if any still existed.

But when he began to look more carefully, he realized that the signs and shapes were there, under the snow. Despite the hooded figure's chuckles and hisses at him, he stopped more than once to examine them. Some were stumps, but the tops of them were always blackened and charred. Severus rubbed the dust through his fingers, able, for some reason, to touch and interact with this landscape as he had not been with the Dursleys' house or the Weasleys'.

But other things were tumbled headstones, and stones that might have been the foundations of buildings, and uprooted piles of cobbles. Severus narrowed his eyes against the wind and stared around again. Yes, the feeling that he should know this place had risen. But he was sure that even the Forbidden Forest, if burned down, would have left more traces than this.

"You do not recognizzze it, Ssseverusss?"

Severus grimaced and turned back to the ghost, his guide. "Should I? The future might produce a lot of different scenarios," he said coolly, and hoped that he was hiding the fast beating of his heart. He would have been down on his knees in front of the ghost before now, honestly, except that he _knew _he was dead. He had _seen _Harry kill him. "I don't know this place."

"Well, then," said the ghost, and gestured with one long, spidery hand.

The snow puffed into the air, high enough that it formed a whirling silver dome over their heads. Severus squinted, and saw that the plain wasn't a plain after all; there were faint regular markings on the ground.

The markings of _streets_.

Severus swung around, staring again at the uprooted cobblestones, and what had once been the corners of foundations, and then back, and looked at the burned-out front of a shop. Yes, he knew where he stood, or rather where it had been.

"Diagon Alley," he whispered.

"Precissely," said the figure, and the snow settled back at a negligent wave of his hand. "Burned in the Great Wizzzarding War."

Severus was about to ask what had happened, but he pinched his lips shut. Of course, if he was seeing a vision of the future, the war hadn't happened yet. He looked around slowly, his eyes ticking from point to point.

"And you brought me to see this—because?" he asked at last. "What does it have to do with Harry?" He could guess that Harry would have fallen here, perhaps, defending the last innocents mind and body, but he had seen nothing so far that indicated that.

"We are here," said the figure, with a solemnity that didn't conceal the glee, and stuck out his hand, fingers parted like the twigs of a dead tree. The snow shifted back from a mound that Severus had thought was the edge of Madam Malkin's shop, or what _had _been Madam Malkin's shop.

Walking closer, Severus could see that the stones were not piled randomly, but had been fashioned into a crude cairn. The top bore a softly fluttering set of letters, not on parchment but coiling in the air, made of light, enchanted to last. That they were so dim now, dim enough not to shine through the snow, told Severus something about the devastation that had burned here.

_The resting place of Harry Potter, Savior of the Wizarding World twice over._

_ He destroyed the Dark Lord Voldemort and the Dark Lord Donatien. We honor him._

Severus stared dully. He could feel the figure hovering behind him, waiting for him to say something. But Severus was not sure what he could say. He shook his head, in the end, and spoke. He needed the history, and never mind the delight that the figure would take in telling him.

"He got involved in battling another Dark Lord? Why?" Harry had told Severus often enough that he never wanted to go to war again.

"Well," said the hooded figure, working around in front of Severus so that he had to look at it, "after you left him, dear Harry became _depresssed. _He didn't want to sssit around and do nothing, ssso he engaged in—risssky undertakings. And when another Dark Lord arossse, it wasss not in hisss nature to sssit at home."

"Where are all the wizards, if he saved the world?" Severus gestured around at the ruins of Diagon Alley, and ignored the bit about him leaving Harry. Of course he would never do that. This vision was only a hypothetical one, and the events had not happened or were not happening that very night. These were the events that only _might _happen.

"He did not sssave the world!" The figure was laughing in merriment, cackles working their way out of its throat. "Did I sssay that he did? He only managed to turn assside the end for a while! That is why no one isss here to tend hisss grave!" The figure bent down and gave the stones a mocking kiss. "Poor boy. To die at the last, and not even sssave the onesss he loved…"

Severus turned away sharply, feeling sick. For Harry's life to be sacrificed in a useless cause was the thing he feared the most.

"I did not cause this by leaving him," he said, his lips numb, the cold of the snow piercing him as it had not before. "This Dark Lord would have arisen whether or not I left him."

"But perhapsss he would not have felt the urge to go on a sssuicide ssstrike if you had not," said the cloaked figure brightly. "Perhapsss he would have waited for help, for sssomeone who could have aided him in doing sssomething other than unleashing a blassst of fire that withered everything it touched…"

Severus shuddered. Yes, he could imagine that. He knew the strength of Harry's magic, which most often now burned like a warm and loving fire confined to a hearth, and all for Severus. But if Harry was alone, despairing, if his friends were dead, if he had nothing left to live for, he would have released his magic as fire.

And it would not have saved what it touched. It would have brought the beginning of the end, the motionless devastation that Severus saw all around him.

No wonder this place had felt familiar. It was not only the outlines of Diagon Alley that had called to his eyes. It was the feeling of the magic hovering in the air. Harry, and not the Dark Lord Donatien, had caused this, and no one could return here to tend his grave because of the poison the land exhaled.

"Take me home," Severus said, not turning to face the cloaked figure.

"But Ssseverusss," he said, and came up beside Severus, reaching out to put a hand on his hunched shoulder. "Have you not learned your lessson? You cannot go home until you do."

"I _said_," Severus began, swinging around savagely, and stressing the word to show that his own sibilants were normal.

He found himself facing the wall of his lab, with nothingness behind him. The nothingness that had consumed the Dark Lord in the first place, he thought.

The clock struck six.

Severus heard a shuffling in the outer room, and darted a glance at the clock. Then he stared. Harry had come _home _at six for the Weasleys' party, hadn't he? That had been when their row began. Severus had come into his lab at six-thirty at the earliest, and surely his travels with the ghosts had to have taken more time than this…

But no, the clock stood steadily at six, and now he could hear Harry's voice calling, "Severus?"

Severus took a deep breath, shook his head, and made his way to the door. There was a translucent withered rose by one of his cauldrons, he saw. He ignored it.

He did not truly believe that the world would end if he left Harry. That was only one possible future out of many, and there might never be a rising of a Dark Lord. Or if there was, Harry might be killed in the first strike, because of course that Dark Lord would be wary of the man who had slain the last one.

Severus touched his wand at the thought.

But if he had a second chance to make things up with Harry, then he would.

"Severus? Are you here?"

He _remembered_ Harry saying those words, summoning him out of his lab and into the discussion of the Weasleys' party. He smiled a little, gripping the knob of the door to the drawing room.

If one vision he had seen was only a version of how events _might _play out, then this could be, too. He had been given the choice to make a new future out of the past, to participate in the present.

He opened the door and said calmly, "Yes, Harry. I just finished brewing. Was there something you wanted to discuss?"

**That Night**

"I'm here, Harry," Severus repeated quietly when there was no response, stepping out of the lab and into the drawing room.

Harry whipped around. His eyes were big and startled, and he still wore the Auror robes, not the comfortable, tattered clothing that Severus had seen him wearing in the vision of the party. He vaguely remembered Harry changing before he had walked out—the first time—but he hadn't paid much attention to it then. "Oh, good," Harry said, and his smile warmed his face. "Let me go up and get dressed, and we can leave."

Severus drew a challenging breath for himself. Harry had walked away before he could answer last time, and that had increased his irritation—being ignored for, as far as he could tell, people who weren't even here. Indeed, Harry had already turned away and was jogging towards the steep black stairs that ran up to their bedroom, so certain of Severus's compliance that he hadn't even waited for his answer.

Severus stepped forwards this time, getting between Harry and the stairs, and swept the present he had bought Harry off the mantle as his lover stared curiously at him. "I wanted you to open this first," Severus said. "I thought you could wear it tonight."

He wasn't sure if it was the gift or the reason that made Harry smile at him, but the smile took over his face, and lingered in the eagerness with which he opened the flat box. Severus watched him, wondering whether that light had been there all along, unnoticed, at the mention of Christmas, or whether it had been newly conjured into being by the same forces that had moved this evening back in time.

Then he decided that it didn't matter. The important thing was that he was seeing it now.

Harry gasped softly as he flipped back the lid of the box and stared into the depths, pulling out a jumper that shimmered in his hands. Severus permitted himself a smug smile. The jumper was green, but made of spidersilk dyed and strengthened and woven by spells. It made the ratty jumper he had been wearing in the vision Fred Weasley had showed Severus look like the rag it was.

"Thank you," Harry whispered. He looked up at Severus, smiling. "So, did you get green because it was the color of that jumper Mrs. Weasley made for me, or for Slytherin?"

"Neither," Severus said, pleased to be able to tell a truth that the night of ghosts and strangeness had not altered. "I obtained green for the color of your eyes."

Harry stared at him, and then those eyes went a little misty. He stepped up beside Severus and touched his chest, carefully, as if he wanted to feel the beating of Severus's heart. Then he reached up and clasped his shoulders, smiling all the while at him, a tender, fragile smile Severus had never seen before.

"Thank you," he whispered, and leaned up further to kiss Severus.

Severus thought he saw, before the kiss claimed his attention and the evening seemed to blur just a _little _to the right as the course of events was altered, three ghostly flowers lying on the mantle where he had retrieved Harry's present. One of them was a lily, one a carnation, one a withered rose.

The rose turned to ashes and blew away. The carnation briefly gleamed and then seemed to settle in Harry's hair, reflecting firelight from a hearth full of Weasleys. Well, Severus would just have to take the right spells along.

The lily lingered, and for a second, Severus thought he saw Lily's face in the mirror above the mantle, smiling with delight as she spun the flower between her fingers.

When she faded, along with the flower, Harry had drawn back from the kiss and was looking at Severus strangely. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Not now," Severus said, and took Harry's chin in his fingers. "Not now that you are here, and I know we will be there _together_." Because he was still himself, no matter what the ghosts thought, he had to add, "And therefore the Weasley chit will not get hold of you."

"Her name is _Ginny_, and I'm _not interested_," Harry said, but he was laughing, and his eyes were as bright as Christmas lights, or fire, or snow.

This time, the kiss was all the better, for being something they forged together.

**The End.**


End file.
